Risk aversion and religion

We use a dataset for a demographically representative sample of the Dutch population that contains a revealed preference risk attitude measure, as well as detailed information about participants’ religious background, to study three issues. First, we find strong confirmatory evidence that more religious people, as measured by church membership or attendance, are more risk averse with regard to financial risks. Second, we obtain some evidence that Protestants are more risk averse than Catholics in such tasks. Third, our data suggest that the link between risk aversion and religion is driven by social aspects of church membership, rather than by religious beliefs themselves.     

The Distinction Between Risk and Hazard: Understanding and Use in Stakeholder Communication

A major issue in all risk communication efforts is the distinction between the terms “risk” and “hazard.” The potential to harm a target such as human health or the environment is normally defined as a hazard, whereas risk also encompasses the probability of exposure and the extent of damage. What can be observed again and again in risk communication processes are misunderstandings and communication gaps related to these crucial terms. We asked a sample of 53 experts from public authorities, business and industry, and environmental and consumer organizations in Germany to outline their understanding and use of these terms using both the methods of expert interviews and focus groups. The empirical study made clear that the terms risk and hazard are perceived and used very differently in risk communication depending on the perspective of the stakeholders. Several factors can be identified, such as responsibility for hazard avoidance, economic interest, or a watchdog role. Thus, communication gaps can be reduced to a four‐fold problem matrix comprising a semantic, conceptual, strategic, and control problem. The empirical study made clear that risks and hazards are perceived very differently depending on the stakeholders’ perspective. Their own worldviews played a major role in their specific use of the two terms hazards and risks in communication.     

Examining the Influence of the Wine Festival Experience on Tourists’ Quality of Life

Hosting events and festivals is the best way of providing the wine tourism experience. Wine festivals offer a wide range of experiences that are different from day-to-day living, offer a lifestyle package and are an indicator of lifestyle tourism experience. Tourists travel to wine festivals for wine and other leisure-related experiences, including opportunities for social and/or cultural experiences, interactivity and personal development. Therefore, wine festivals should provide an experience that can influence the quality of life (QoL) of the attending tourist. QoL is influenced by various life domains, which include social, leisure and recreational, intellectual, culinary, and travel life. By its nature, a wine festival is able to influence life domains, thereby decreasing or increasing the level of satisfaction with QoL, according to the level of satisfactory experience. The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of the wine festival experience on the QoL of attending tourists. The structural relationship between the wine festival experience on tourists’ QoL is shown in a structural equation model (SEM), which is based on the notion that the QoL of attending tourists will be influenced by their level of satisfaction in various life domains. A self-administrated questionnaire was distributed during the Wacky Wine Festival in Robertson South Africa. The data from 329 (N) eligible questionnaires was cleaned, captured and analysed using SPSS. Furthermore, Amos was used to test the structural model providing statistical support. From the study’s findings, managerial recommendations were made with the aim of maximising attending wine tourists’ QoL. The research contributes to the literature related to QoL.     

Figuren der reflektierten Improvisation in der sozialp?dagogischen Jugendberatung

Zusammenfassung In dem Aufsatz wird untersucht, was ungeplante und unplanbare Ereignisse für den Bereich der sozialp?dagogischen Jugendberatung bedeuten. Zun?chst wird erl?utert, inwiefern sozialp?dagogisches Beratungshandeln stets Elemente der Improvisation in sich birgt. Es folgen Analysen zur Frage, wie das blo?e Improvisieren zum reflektierten Improvisieren qualifiziert werden kann. Abschlie?end wird dargelegt, welche Handlungsfiguren durch die reflektierte Improvisation in der sozialp?dagogischen Beratung entstehen.

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The author analyses the meaning of not planed and impossible to plan events in the field of social pedagogical counselling of young people. As a first step he describes how far the social pedagogical counselling always includes elements of improvisation. An analysis of the question how norma improvisation could be qualified as reflective improvisation follows. Finally the authors shows which forms of acting emerge using the reflected improvisation in the social pedagogical counselling.

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Stefan Danner, Dr. phil., Professor für Erziehungswissenschaft an der Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur Leipzig.

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Arbeitsschwerpunkte: Bildungstheorie, Didaktik der Elementarp?dagogik, Jugendarbeit und Erwachsenenbildung, Methoden der Evaluationsforschung.     

Smooth backfitting in practice

Summary.  Compared with the classical backfitting of Buja, Hastie and Tibshirani, the smooth backfitting estimator (SBE) of Mammen, Linton and Nielsen not only provides complete asymptotic theory under weaker conditions but is also more efficient, robust and easier to calculate. However, the original paper describing the SBE method is complex and the practical as well as the theoretical advantages of the method have still neither been recognized nor accepted by the statistical community. We focus on a clear presentation of the idea, the main theoretical results and practical aspects like implementation and simplification of the algorithm. We introduce a feasible cross-validation procedure and apply it to the problem of data-driven bandwidth choice for the SBE. By simulations it is shown that the SBE and our cross-validation work very well indeed. In particular, the SBE is less affected by sparseness of data in high dimensional regression problems or strongly correlated designs. The SBE has reasonable performance even in 100-dimensional additive regression problems.